Potential Legal Challenges for Blockchain Technology in Competition Lawстатья
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 8 декабря 2021 г.
Аннотация:Blockchain is a catch-up term for a combination of three technologies: distributed ledger, cryptology and network protocols. The first enables the storing of the same info in different places, the second allows secure transactions to be recorded and then encrypted on the distributed ledger. The third element governs the network and verifies transactions across the network automatically and independently. Considered by many as “the biggest technological innovation since the Internet” (Medcraft, 2018), blockchain is a decentralized, more secure and transparent model for transactions that operates on an encrypted peer-to-peer basis. This model challenges the need for trust between parties by instead placing trust in the undelying technological platform This would effectively remove the need for intermediaries whose business has been to make up for the lack of trust; these include banks, brokers, governments, internet platforms, law firms etc. (Pens-Sharp, 2017). While reducing the costs of contract enforcement and thus facilitating trade, blockchain technology may have significant implications for antitrust law. Since decentralized organizations, like blockchain, are not recognized as legal persons, questions arise regarding the ability to detect anticompetitive practices and their perpetrators, such as: "Can a non-entity hold a dominant position?" Can blockchain create a “monopoly without a monopolist?” (Huberman, 2017). Finally, if the blockchain is dominant, which users and/or entities hold that dominant position? This article intends to highlight the challenges that blockchain sets for the analyses of unilateral anticompetitive practices